Post 3: Movies.

 

To be honest I don't have a favorite film genre, personally I prefer to enjoy the pleasure of watching movies in general. However, lately I lean more towards science fiction films such as Inception, V for Vendetta or Arrival.

However, I would like to take a minute to talk about the Wachoswki sisters and the Matrix, who were the directors of this movie. I remember seeing references to the Matrix in commercials or the typical scene where Neo dodges bullets in slow motion ever since I was a little girl, but it wasn't until my teenage years that I spent the time it deserves to really understand the story message that the movie delivers.

My surprise was even greater when in 2020 Lilly Wachowski confirmed the theory that "The Matrix" is a trans story. Lilly stated that that was the original idea of ​​the film, but that the corporate world wasn’t ready for this type of content. This caused my vision and interpretation of the film to change radically, and I liked it even more.

I'm going to put here a part of Lilly's interview with Netflix where she talks a little more about the initial idea of ​​Matrix:

“The Matrix stuff was all like about the desire of transformation, but it was all coming from a closed point of view.  We had the character of Switch who was like a man in the real world and a woman in the Matrix and that’s where both of our head spaces where (…) Because trans people exist in this, specially for me and Lana, were existing in a space where the words didn’t exist, so we’re always living in a world of imagination.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwYBrn2u0do Here’s the interview.

Post 2: The best holidays I've had.

 

The Summer of 2016 I had one of the experiences that have taken me the most to the limit: the summer camp from Cochamó to El Bolsón, Argentina. It all started as a crazy idea that we had with my leaders, Punky and Lily, at that time we were a group of 16 adolescents belonging to the “Avanzada de Pioneros” called “Antumilla Huequén” a group that was born from “Grupo de Guías y Scout La Merced de Valdivia”, to which I belonged for ten years.

Cochamó is a small town located east of Puerto Varas within the Los Lagos region. We got to the town and we had to walk a few kilometers to a campsite where we spent the first night, it was a place in the middle of green and pristine mountains, here we began to feel that the world is too big, and we know too little about the beautiful landscapes it has.

The second day the journey began. The goal was to cross the border from Chile to Argentina walking through "Paso el León" in seven days. I never thought I could achieve something like this in my life, less being only 16 years old and with a full and heavy backpack on my back, but every time I looked up and observed the trees, the immensity of the forest, the singing of the birds and breathed clean air, I felt so alive that I closed my eyes and tried to record that moment and those sensations in my memory forever.

But not everything was perfect. There was an afternoon in which we left very late from the place where we camped called “Los Toboganes” and it got dark before we reached the refuge. It was around 3 in the morning and we were still walking in the dark without being able to set up camp because, honestly, we were lost (which was quite irresponsible now that I look at the situation from another perspective). The worst happened when it started to rain. I remember a moment in which we stopped and burst into tears due to the frustration of the moment, because we were hungry, cold and did not know where to go, also the path had become muddy and many of us fell several times. Yes, it was dangerous and irresponsible, but in that time, scout was much wilder. Finally, at 4AM we managed to get to the shelter, make a fire and eat a hot meal. On the seventh day we reached the Argentine border, traveling a total of 100 kilometers.

Our next destination was “El Bolsón”, a very hippie town in the South of Argentina. We stayed in an ecological community "Bioconstruyendo Patagonia" whose head of the community was called “Pastor Silvestre” -as I told you, VERY hippie-. In this place we helped with the community tasks, which were organized as "loving services" where they formed groups to cook, build adobe houses, help in the community vegetable garden, clean the ecological toilets and other things.

It was a beautiful trip, full of learnings and new experiences, a trip that I definitely have to repeat in my life.

Post 1: A country I would like to visit.

 

If I close my eyes for a while and start to think about the places that I want to see, I could say that the list could be endless, but given the fact that I must choose one, I think it would be Netherlands.

 

When I was in 3erd grade of high school an exchange student from Netherlands arrives to my school in Valdivia, her name was Noor. My English teacher at the time ask her if she could make a presentation about her country and I remember that while she showed us her presentation, I fell deeply in love with the Netherlands and since then I been dreaming to visit it.

The capital of the Netherlands is known as “the city that never sleeps and there is always something to do”, in other words: Amsterdam.

 

One of my favorite hobbies is cycling and the Netherlands is the perfect country to practice this activity. The Dutch landscape is famously flat so is perfect for a ride. You can even get to Belgium or Germany your bike, so it is very easy to do tourism in the interior of the country. The downside of being a flat country is that it makes all places very windy, especially in winter, also in that season the temperature drops too low, rains a lot and it usually snows.

 

The Good thing about the Netherlands is that it is a very organized country, the streets are always clean, and the rate crime is very low. They have a low unemployment rate, and the salaries are high but is expensive to live there, because they have a lot of taxes. They even have a tax for having pets! And their health system is not free either, you must pay for an insurance. Well, not everything is perfect, but I really hope that one day, hopefully when the pandemic ends, I can go for the holidays to the Netherlands.